LA's Budget: Tough Love Required

Updated on 04/26/2025 to correct the link to the City of LA Annual Comprehensive Financial Report.

Earlier this week Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass made her second trip in two months to Sacramento in search of a bailout. The Legislature and Governor Newsom should not consider any such request until LA gets its own spending in order.

Mayor Bass is blaming January’s fires for LA’s fiscal problems but her city had a $924 million deficit last year — before the fires — because Bass boosted spending 13 percent in a single year. Nearly $800 million of the increase went to "Community Development," 80 percent more than the year before. To whom did that spending go, were any of the recipients campaign contributors, and what did the spending achieve? Nearly 60 percent — $6.5 billion — of LA's spending last year went to salaries and benefits. Here's a schedule of salary spending by department:

The city spent another $2 billion on employee benefits. Are all those departments necessary, are they staffed efficiently, are the salary and benefit levels appropriate, and were the unions representing those employees contributors to Ms. Bass’s campaign?

Like every enterprise — especially one with a deficit — LA should adopt zero-based budgeting and justify every dollar of spending. Certainly before asking state taxpayers for a bailout.